Gregory Ciotti

WordPress is a great platform. One weakness that it suffers from, however, is it can be quite slow. Without taking the right precautions, you could end up with a sluggish site. That’s not only a hassle for repeat visitors but will cause you to lose subscribers and customers. In this quick post, I’ll cover all of the best ways that I’ve found to consistently speed up WordPress.

One misconception that forever bothers me is the belief that blogging doesn’t work unless it’s meta. People don’t believe blogs can be successful unless they are about blogging, marketing, or social media. What they don’t understand is that it’s only the marketing blogs that publish things like “income reports” and the like.

Earning customer loyalty is an uphill battle — but it is always worth the effort. You’ve seen the data: the Harvard Business School report that showcased how, on average, increasing customer retention rates by 5 percent increases profits by 25 percent to 95 percent. Much to your disappointment, you find traditional business publications like Forbes seem content to churn out a ...

In the world of startups, few topics have garnered as much buzz as transparency—the act of sharing previously private company information with the inquisitive public. You can now find dozens if not hundreds of companies sharing, well, nearly everything. It’s an exciting development. After all, does anyone want more secrecy from the businesses they support? Where transparency ...

Reading is the supreme “lifehack” — distilled knowledge that often took years to assemble can be consumed in just a few hours. And the more you know about social psychology and human behavior, the better. At Help Scout we have learning stipend (here’s why) for our teammates so you can buy as many books as you need.

Just as important as the work you do is the person you bring to work. Your mood, outlook, and actions echo out to those around you. One of the best ways to contribute to your surroundings to give the gift of encouragement. I’ve written—on multiple occasions—about the dangers of making “Great work!” an expected platitude. Let’s be clear: when everything is great, nothing is.

Creative work is rarely kind enough to grant the oh-so satisfying feeling of unquestionable completion. There is no right, there is no wrong. There’s just you and your ideas. Compare that to an assembly task, one with a defined outcome. When assembling a kitchen table, if you end up with three legs, you screwed up. Oh well. At least there’s a known mistake to fix.

“Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.” So the saying goes, but it’s incredibly shortsighted. Great teachers amplify the work of everyone around them, and that’s only the beginning. Don’t fall for the tired truism. Those who can’t teach are missing out. Why dismiss yourself as unable to contribute beyond your own abilities? Putting time and care into sharing what you kno ...

A common, tired parlance in the world of personal development is to never compare yourself to others. The intent is honorable; the advice is terrible. There is a self-aggrandizing belief that you never need “suffer” from viewing your work next to someone else’s. This thinking stems from the fact that it is difficult to recognize what makes for a healthy, constructive comparis ...

Consistency doesn’t count for everything, but it sure counts for a lot. With the many landmines out there, ready to derail even the most talented of people, “showing up” regularly offers some undeniable benefits. Some of these perks often go overlooked. For those excited to make progress this year, let’s keep in mind all of the advantages at our disposal when we have an envi ...

Compounding interest produces the most meaningful results, not individual swings. Why then, has the world become obsessed with “lifehacks?” Partly because a small selection of shortcuts are useful and meaningful. But also because businesses know that we are drawn to the illusion of progress. I’ve often joked that Men’s Health has given up on writing headlines because they k ...

Bras, girdles and leggings infused with caffeine and sold as weight loss aids were more decaf than espresso, and the companies that sold them have agreed to refund money to customers and pull their ads, U.S. regulators said on Monday.

Have you tried LinkedIn’s publishing feature? Do you want more people to see your business articles? LinkedIn publishing gives you the opportunity to reach members of the biggest professional audience in the social sphere. In this article I’ll share five tips for optimizing your content for LinkedIn publishing.

Quality output demands quality input. As healthy food fuels the body, so does brain food fuel the mind. Garbage in, garbage out as they say. Amidst the “sky is falling” debates over how TV and the Internet are making us mindless drones, this is the real issue to keep in mind — we need to be cultivate more than we consume. It’s an important concept worthy of regular revisiting.

Regret is the worst emotion to base your decisions on. Regret is negative reinforcement. It is self-loathing, stressful, and destructive. So why do we so often parrot the advice of “Don’t do something you might regret?” On the surface, it seems a simple message that encourages caution, but it could be structured without the worry and pessimism. Why not say: “Do something you’ll be proud of.

Creativity does not rest on eureka moments — it is a process, designed to consistently bring abstract ideas into the tangible world. For creatives, this emphasizes the importance of routines. Random bits of profound inspiration are few and fleeting; consistent work in your craft requires a sustainable way to develop good ideas into great ones.

In 1885, Pyotr Ilich Tchaikovsky rented a cottage in a small village some 50 miles northwest of Moscow. After years of restless wandering through Europe, the 45-year-old composer found his new living arrangement a wonderful relief. “What a joy to be in my own home!” he wrote to his patroness....

Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore. ~ André Gide Setting sail away from the safe harbor of best practices is a fear that we, as marketers, must learn to embrace. Scary situations arise when you set foot in uncharted territory. In March, our company decided do just that, by “storming the gates” and completely removing ...

In all my time as a substitute teacher for elementary school, perhaps nothing out of the mouths of babes disappointed me as much as this: “But Mr. Greg, girls aren’t good at math like boys are.” From one of my favorite students no less, a total sweetheart. It was disheartening to hear. At such a young age, abilities in subjects like mathematics had already been defined as innate.

“I’m just not a math person.” We hear it all the time. And we've had enough. Because we believe that the idea of “math people” is the most self-destructive idea in America today. The truth is, you probably are a math person, and by thinking otherwise, you are possibly hamstringing your own career. Worse, you...

Music has a way of expressing that which cannot be put into words. It is for this reason (and many more) that music is regarded as one of the triumphs of human creativity―but does music itself help one to create? This is an important question to examine, because music has increasingly become apart of the modern-day work session.

I’ve learned many things about bettering myself from Han Solo. Han deals with force users, droids and imperial fleets on a regular basis, yet he’s been gifted with nothing more than a quick wit, his fellow “nerfhearder” Chewie, and the Millennium Falcon (equivalent in today’s standards to a beat up Camero).

When you attempt to envision a “writer,” I’d posit most of you see a quirky recluse, hunched over a desk in some cabin, crumpled paper strewn about as they obsessively work on the next great American novel. To me, writing is so much more than that. Writing is thought put to page, which makes all of us writers — even if we don’t have the chops to spin beautiful prose. I know, I know.